Sunset Boulevard Billy Wilder's Classic Term Paper

films, or of stories in magazines in different price ranges, depend not so much on subject matter as on classifying, organizing, and labeling consumers. Something is provided for all so that none may escape; the distinctions are emphasized and extended. The public is catered for with a hierarchical range of mass-produced products of varying quality, thus advancing the rule of complete quantification. Everybody must behave (as if spontaneously) in accordance with his previously determined and indexed level, and choose the category of mass product turned out for his type. Consumers appear as statistics on research organization charts, and are divided by income groups into red, green, and blue areas; the technique is that used for any type of propaganda (Adorno & Horkheimer).

The media is of course complacent in such a system, in that it plays a significant role in turning heroes of consumption - actors, singers, and models - into celebrities. But of course the media has short attention span, as does the culture industry it is indelibly linked to. Once the "hero of consumption," in this case the actress, has reached her "shelf date," she is no longer considered a valuable commodity and can thus be discarded.

Sunset Boulevard explores the drastic affects such a system can have on individuals. Once she is passed her prime, Norma literally has to kill someone in order to get the attention that she so craves. Once the celebrity of yesteryear commits a crime, the media descends upon her fragile, decaying universe, generating as much hype "as when they open a supermarket," says narrator Joe towards the end of the film, ironically commenting on his own death from beyond the grave.

Sunset Boulevard can thus be viewed as a struggle between the consumer (Norma) and the producer (Joe). Joe has been unsuccessful in ingratiating himself into the very system that has rejected Norma. They are, in fact, both rejects of the system. Both feel that they can use one another in order to make it in the Hollywood system. But the system ultimately uses both of them - and destroys them in the process. In the words of one critic, "Sunset Boulevard is both a savage indictment of the star system (and the monsters it produces), and an all-too-knowing depiction of a writer's impotence in Hollywood" (Hennigan). The more that Joe takes from Norma, the more he loses. And the more faith Norma invests in her own fading star, the further away from reality she gets and the closer she delves into the unreality of the very system that once made her a star.

Bibliography

Adorno, Theodor and Max Horkheimer. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass

Deception." From Dialectic of Enlightenment, 1944. Retrieved at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/culture-industry.htm.

Hennigan, Adrian. "Sunset Boulevard (1950)." BBC, March 13, 2003. Retrieved at http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2001/04/10/sunset_boulevard_1950_review.shtml.

Wilder, Billy, dir. Sunset Boulevard. DVD: Collector's Edition, 2002.